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Student Motivation and Engagement in Literacy Learning

By: U.S. Department of Education

Teachers can help students build confidence in their ability to comprehend content-area texts, by providing a supportive environment and offering information on how reading strategies can be modified to fit various tasks. Teachers should also make literacy experiences more relevant to students' interests, everyday life, or important current events.

Increasing motivation and engagement

Establish meaningful and engaging content learning goals around the essential ideas of a discipline as well as the specific
learning processes students use to access those ideas.

Monitor students' progress over time as they read for comprehension and develop more control over their thinking processes relevant to the discipline. Provide explicit feedback to students about their progress. When teachers set goals to reach a certain standard, students are likely to sustain their efforts until they achieve that standard. Learning goals may be set by the teacher or the student. However, if students set their own goals, they are more apt to be fully engaged in the activities required to achieve them.

Allowing students some choice of complementary
books and types of reading and
writing activities has a positive impact on
students' engagement and reading comprehension.1 Empowering students to make
decisions about topics, forms of communication,
and selections of materials encourages
them to assume greater ownership
and responsibility for their engagement in
learning.2

Make literacy experiences more relevant
to students' interests, everyday life, or important
current events.3

Look for opportunities
to bridge the activities outside and inside
the classroom. Tune into the lives of students
to find out what they think is relevant and
why, and then use this information to design
instruction and learning opportunities that
will be more relevant to students.4

Consider
constructing an integrated approach to instruction
that ties a rich conceptual theme
to a real-world application. For example, use
a science topic in the news or one that students
are currently studying, such as adolescent
health issues, to build students' reading,
writing, and discourse skills.

Connections between disciplines, such
as science and language arts, taught
through conceptual themes.

Connections among strategies for
learning, such as searching, comprehending,
interpreting, composing, and
teaching content knowledge.

Connections among classroom activities
that support motivation and social
and cognitive development.

Potential roadblocks and solutions

Some teachers think that motivational activities
must entertain students and therefore
create fun activities that are not necessarily
focused on learning.

Rewarding
students through contests, competitions,
and points might entice them to do homework,
complete tasks, and participate in
class. Though meaningful goals, these might
not result in meaningful learning. Teachers
are often exhausted from running contests
to get students to read, and the external motivation
of such activities often makes students
dependent on the teacher or activity
to benefit from reading.6

Teachers should
help students become more internally motivated.
They should closely connect instructional
practice and student performance to
learning goals. Teachers should set the bar
high and provide informational feedback for
depth of learning, complex thinking, risk taking,
and teamwork.

Students should be encouraged
to reflect on how they learn, what
they do well, and what they need to improve
on. The more students know themselves as
learners, the more confident they will become
and the better able they will be to set
their own goals for learning.

Some students may think that textbooks
are boring and beyond their ability to understand.

Many high school texts do not
have enough supplementary explanation
that fleshes out disconnected information,
which might contribute to difficulty in comprehension.
If students cannot comprehend
the text that they read and the textbook is
the basis of curriculum, their sense of failure
grows larger.

Complementary materials
should be available to students, including a
set of reading materials on the same topic
that range from very easy to very challenging
or supplemental trade materials, to provide
resources on various content topics to
help students develop deeper background
knowledge relevant to course content.

Many content-area teachers do not realize
the importance of teaching the reading
strategies and thinking processes that
skilled readers use in different academic
disciplines and do not recognize the beneficial
effects of such instruction on students'
ability to engage with their learning.

Too few
content-
area teachers know how to emphasize
the reading and writing practices specific
to their disciplines, so students are not
encouraged to read and write and reason like
historians, scientists, and mathematicians.

Literacy coaches should emphasize the role
of content-area teachers, especially in secondary
schools in promoting literacy skills,
and the role of reading skills in promoting
performance in various content areas such
as history, science and social sciences. This
can be accomplished through a coordinated
schoolwide approach that provides professional
development in content literacy.

Many
resources available on the Internet provide
information about strategic reading in content
areas. Content-area teachers should also
develop formative assessments that allow
students to make their thinking visible and
that provide evidence of the problem-solving
and critical-thinking strategies students use
to comprehend and construct meaning.
Teachers can use these assessments to make
informed decisions about lesson planning,
instructional practices and materials, and activities that will be more appropriate and
engaging for students.

Adolescent students who struggle in reading
do not expect to do well in class.

As
these students progress through school,
most teachers do not expect them to do well
either and often remark that they should
have learned the material in earlier grades.
Many adolescents do not express confidence
in their own ability—they do not trust or
value their own thinking. The strengths of
students can be identified through interest
surveys, interviews, and discussions, and
through learning about and understanding
students' reading histories. These activities
will help teachers get to know their students.

For many students, having a personal connection
with at least one teacher can make a
difference in their response to school. Knowing
students' interests makes it easier for
teachers to choose materials that will hook
students and motivate them to engage in
their own learning. Teachers should provide
multiple learning opportunities in which students
can experience success and can begin
to build confidence in their ability to read,
write, and think at high levels.

References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C. E. (2004). Reading next — A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

References

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C. E. (2004). Reading next — A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Comments and Recommendations

The article states that ”Too few content- area teachers know how to emphasize the reading and writing practices specific to their disciplines, so students are not encouraged to read and write and reason like historians, scientists, and mathematicians.” The comment I have to make on this point is that many teachers do not require their students to respond and/or write in complete sentences!
The second point I would like to make is the article states, “For many students, having a personal connection with at least one teacher can make a difference in their response to school. “ I find that is true, but unfortunately in today’s society teachers value their privacy and are afraid to share with their students some personal aspects of their lives. There are some teachers who have expressed to me literal fear of some of their students

Posted by:
Laurie
| June 05, 2010 09:23 PM

Elementary Teachers should have an inservice day to assist intermediate and high school teachers on how to assist their struggling readers. Extra time for students for this basic reading instruction would be very beneficial.

Posted by:
Cheryl
| March 04, 2013 04:38 PM

Good Article...For my Opinion,enhance your classroom; participation is a feature of many course designs. It can result in insightful comments and interesting connections being made by students and can foster a high level of energy and enthusiasm in the classroom learning environment. Teachers can break up a lesson with a survey or opinion and hole the students’ considerate of the info that’s just been presented. If students mention the lesson is not to understand, the teacher can go back through it, rather of forging ahead with the lesson while the class remains problem.

Posted by:
| March 09, 2016 03:23 AM

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